Little Known Facts
by dontbesojaded
Summary: 10 drabbles/ficlets/oneshots. Some little things you might not have known about Sam and Diane's relationship. Takes place throughout the series. Some very slight AU...terrible summary but please read!


_**little known facts**_

_**#1- i knew this story would break my heart **_

The phrase "magnificent pagan beast" really didn't ever leave her mind. She would come across it in some obscure novel years later, and would absentmindedly dogear the page. She would be completely shocked to find herself crying; only noticing when tears began to obscure her vision and make the ink on the page run.

_**#2- all sad words of tongue and pen**_

Diane wrote Sam hundreds of letters from Goldenbrook. The only one she ever sent got lost in the mail (as these types of letters always seem to do) and arrived 5 years later than it was intended to. The last lines went something like this:

_God knows, Sam, that I do love you. It seems to be my lot in life to always harbor feelings for you and it is both a blessing and a curse. Alas, although many philosophers have said otherwise; love does not conquer all. You hurt me, Sam, and I may never be able to return to you, no matter how much I wish I could. But I can forgive you. "Throughout eternity I forgive you and you forgive me," William Blake wrote that in a poem, and I can only hope someday the latter part will apply. Yours always, Diane._

Despite the fact that she had returned to him and he already knew how their story played out, the letter opened wounds, some old, some still fresh enough to sting. The sight of her delicate handwriting, growing more and more chaotic as her mind worked faster than her hand possibly could and the lazy loop of her signature brought about a tightness in his chest that he hadn't felt for a long time. He tied it up with the rest of her letters (because he never had managed to throw them away) for safekeeping.

_**#3-drunk dialing **_

She would call the bar very late and very drunk one night while he was away at sea trying to forget her. Only Carla, who would answer the phone, would ever know how close Diane had been to dropping it all and coming back to Boston. They both knew all it would have taken was his voice. In a sudden stroke of empathy Carla spoke to a clearly hammered Diane Chambers for almost three hours, refusing to relinquish the knowledge of anyway to contact Sam, but ending their conversation by telling her: "I know I wasn't always that nice to you, but you're a tough cookie. Buck up, whitey, you're gonna be ok without him."

Carla would never tell Sam about the phone call, but sometimes she would catch Sammy staring off towards the door and Diane's desperate voice would suddenly come to mind, ("Please, Carla, if I could only talk to him.") and she would wonder if she made the right choice.

Diane would not call again.

_**#4- in sickness or in health**_

She got some strange virus that resulted in dizzy spells and 104-degree- fever-induced delirium, and even though their relationship was still relatively new Sam had a key to her apartment and would come check on her every so often. When he eventually found her sitting in her kitchen after the world had started spinning particularly fast, he picked her up and carried her back to bed (and she didn't miss the second of total panic that flashed across his face when he found her on the floor).

He thought she was asleep, or too far gone to notice, so he didn't leave. Instead he would sit out the night and into the early morning in a chair in the corner of her bedroom. When he left for work he was be exhausted; his guard was down and somehow when he gently kissed her hot forehead, he had slipped and said he loved her.

He didn't the smile that spread slowly across her lips.

_**#5- sweet and simple**_

There was a night, during the period when Norm was living at Cheers 24/7 instead of 20/6 when he had lingered long past last call, nursing one more beer. Sam and Diane had tucked themselves away on the booth in the corner, forgetting about him it seemed.

Norm wasn't a voyeurist by nature, but Diane's laugh had called his attention to them. Diane was leaning back against Sam, her head on his shoulder. He'd said something quietly to her and she'd given him a look of surprise before laughing; with him, not at him. It was a sweet, intimate laugh, meant only for Sam.

Norm got the prickly feeling that he was intruding even though they weren't doing anything but talking, but he didn't look away. And as Norm watched from the end of the bar, Sam moved a piece of hair that had fallen into Diane's eyes. It was such a casual, simple gesture, but there was something personal about it, something that suggested a deep familiarity. Norm had seen Sammy pick up a hundred chicks, seen him make all kinds of moves, but he'd never seen him do something so simple as brushing hair out of a girl's eyes.

_Well, I'll be damned,_ he thought suddenly as he sipped his beer, _Sammy is in love_. He wouldn't tell Sam that he thought so, but he'd never (not even when Miss Chambers was long gone) change his mind, and he'd swear he'd never again see Sam do something so simple as brushing away a strand of a girl's hair.

_**#6- how to lose at poker**_

When Diane swore to Sam that if she walked out the door she would never return, she had been bluffing. When he challenged her to leave, he didn't think she really would. She left. He didn't follow her. Their bluffs had been called and they both had lost.

By the time he went after her, it was too late. By the time she went back, he had closed the bar and gone home. And they both would have been terrible at poker.

_**#7- over cold coffee**_

Rebecca only asked Sam about the infamous Diane Chambers once. Over coffee at three am, when they were still practically strangers, seemed as good a time as any.

_"So tell me about this girl, the one who left? I mean, she's practically a legend."_

_"Her name was, uh, Diane. Diane Chambers."_

She realized as they talked that no time was a good time for Sam to talk about Diane. His face screwed up when he said her name and he stumbled over details that he obviously remembered but couldn't quite say. Somehow he got through the whole story, and took a long sip of cold coffee. He smiled, almost guiltily as if to say: _Yep, you caught me, the infamous womanizer fell in love and then fell apart. Ain't life funny?_

Rebecca thought she'd never seen a man look so broken.

_**#8- the inn**_

She'd ruined the Pequod Inn. He couldn't take any other women there after taking her for the last time. He'd had to make up some elaborate lie for Candi to leave as soon as they arrived.

He saw her on the beach, where they'd sat and watched the tide get higher and higher. He saw her in the room, in the restaurant, in the lobby. All he could remember was her, and it hurt. Because he thought she'd forgotten about him (she hadn't).

**_#9- now _**

She hadn't realized she wouldn't be able to go back to Cheers until she'd finished her tv script and three years had already passed. It didn't hit her that she couldn't go back to Sam and life like it was before until it was far too late. She'd missed her chance. But now she was done, she was published, she'd accomplished what she'd set out to do three years ago. Sure, she'd taken a longer route there and six months had gotten longer and longer but she'd always planned on going back. Now she couldn't, and all she could think was: _what do I do now?_

_**#10- carved hearts**_

It was the bar that finally did it. He could be fine for days, granted that he avoided his office and the men's room (because no matter how hard anyone tried the sharpie wouldn't come off the walls, and her name was in a loud pink-_for a good time call diane chambers at 867-5309_- right at eye level). Then he would get behind the bar, the one place where he could usually feel right at home. He would lean over to grab a glass and there it would be:_ SM & DC_ carved into it like a brand. He saw it and he knew he had to sell Cheers-it had become a haunted house inhabited by only one ghost. She was everywhere, she had carved her initials into his bar, and into his heart. And he was oddly certain that though over time hundreds of beer mugs and fists might cleanse the bar, he would never be quite so lucky.


End file.
